According to the survey, those groups all leave a median tip of 20 percent of the total bill when they dine out, making them the best tippers among diners at U.S. restaurants.

The survey shows women, by contrast, leave a median tip of 16 percent, and the median for Southerners and Democrats is 15 percent.

BY GEOGRAPHY

The survey shows geographically, people who live in the Northeast are most likely to open up their wallets for restaurant waiters, hotel housekeepers and hair stylists. But coffee shop baristas get the best treatment in the Midwest and West, where about half of all customers say they drop some cash in the jar always or most of the time.

Waiters and waitresses may want to avoid the South. It’s the only region where both the average and the median tip left for servers at sit-down restaurants is a sparse 15 percent. For comparison, the median in the West, Midwest and Northeast are 18, 20 and 20, respectively.

DO SERVERS AGREE?

Restaurant servers contacted by CreditCards.com say the poll results are in line with their personal experiences. People who pay with credit cards seem to leave more, and they tip more consistently.

“In my experience, white men are the best tippers,” says Darron Cardosa, who has waited tables at a neighborhood restaurant in Sunnyside Queens, New York, for more than 20 years. “Of course, that is a generalization, but I think most folks who wait tables would agree.”

Who does the wait staff dread? Big groups of young people. “When I see a bunch of college-age people or people in their 20s, I hope it’s not my table, because I know they’re not going to tip well,” says an 18-year-old waitress at an upscale pizza place in Charlotte, North Carolina. “People who are middle-aged who pay with credit cards are the best tippers.”

SURVEY METHODOLOGY

The survey was created by CreditCards.com and conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. PSRAI obtained telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample of 1,002 adults living in the continental United States. Interviews were conducted by landline (500) and cellphone (502, including 329 without a landline phone) in English and Spanish by Princeton Data Source from June 22-25, 2017. Statistical results are weighted to correct known demographic discrepancies. The margin of sampling error for the complete set of weighted data is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.